Thursday, July 12, 2007

how pure are you?

I wrote this before Wimbledon and for some reason I didn't get round to posting it. Well, here it is:

Last month few pundits denied that it would have been really impressive if Federer won his fourth straight gland slam, but they all noted that purists would prefer that the four were won in the correct order.

Why does valuing luck and arbitrariness make you a purist?

Looking back at grand slam winners its easy to conclude that some wins were more impressive than others. This is most obvious when a player is injured during the final and the other guy is declared the winner. Though there are plenty of ways to win a tournament with the help of blind luck.

Winning a calendar year grand slam will always be impressive but they are not all equally impressive and sometimes not as impressive as non-grand slam winning year.

Of course it is also true that a player who has won Wimbledon is not necessarily better than someone who hasn’t. The second best player ever might play at the same time as the greatest and never win a thing.

Purists, it seems favour the lucky flash in the pan over the consistently impressive. Which is not especially pure.